ProPublica’s investigations illustrate the
creation of a cult of personality that was engineered from the top down.
(photo: Slate)
11 August 23
ProPublica released yet another blockbuster report on Thursday about Justice Clarence Thomas’ brazen violation of federal ethics rules, revealing a new roster of billionaires who have routinely funded his extraordinarily lavish lifestyle in secret. On top of Harlan Crow’s humble alms, we can now add at least 38 destination vacations, 26 private jet flights, six helicopter flights, another yacht voyage (in the Bahamas this time), a dozen VIP passes to sporting events, and so much more—all underwritten by billionaire business magnates like H. Wayne Huizenga and David Sokol.
Once again, ProPublica reports that none of these junkets, trips, or freebies were listed on the justice’s annual disclosure reports as required by law, even though Thomas has reported other gifts and travel on some occasions. Thomas also participated in a scheme to quite literally sell access to the Supreme Court building, allegedly to raise money for the ultra-elite Horatio Alger Association. Ten seats at the group’s ceremony at 1 First St. required a contribution of at least $100,000. Justices are explicitly advised not to use their positions to fundraise for private groups.
At this point, Thomas’ covert acceptance of billionaires’ endless largesse—and his refusal to disclose it, which amounts to serial lawbreaking—is well known. Indeed, the repeated and mealy-mouthed defenses that Thomas was once advised by some unnamed ethics expert that he didn’t have to disclose travel—and the even more preposterous claims that Thomas is a paragon of virtue incapable of being influenced—have become less and less credible with each successive report.
What stands out above the increasingly numbing details of Thomas’ extravagant travel and recreational experiences are the efforts of his access-seekers to build a national cult around the justice. With each story it becomes plainer that his closest, richest friends appear eager to idolize the justice, creating a hagiography in which Thomas is not just a great and brilliant man, but an almost messianic leader for whom no earthly reward can be sufficient. It’s not just the travel and vacations they finance. It’s a set of shrines and temples, films, books, paintings, and myths.
In addition to the scope and breadth of the attempts of the ultrarich to curry favor with an influential jurist, ProPublica’s investigations also illustrate the creation of a cult of personality that was engineered from the top down. Financed by a small group of extremely wealthy people were efforts to turn the jurist into a national cultural icon, which then locked the justice into a social class and milieu in which his jurisprudence is hailed as a divinely inspired vindication of America’s most cherished principles. It isn’t quid pro quo bribery, but something far more effective: an inner circle of apostles who worship and reward Thomas’ jurisprudence, then finance cultural efforts to redeem and revere him.
A bribe rests on a mere financial transaction. It secures a one-off quid pro quo that is not guaranteed to endure. What this coterie of billionaires has offered Thomas is a coronation. And those last for life.
It is especially fascinating to see the unseemly work that went into constructing this mythology around the justice now that his disciples are in the midst of a heated campaign to sell it to the public. Judge Amul Thapar, a Donald Trump appointee, is currently on a book tour hawking his new tribute to Thomas, The People’s Justice, which claims that Thomas’ jurisprudence “favors the ordinary people.” Thomas’ wealthy friends financed the ultrareverent documentary Created Equal in 2020, in which he memorably declared that he preferred “the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that.” Before that, Federalist Society co-chair Leonard Leo funneled millions of dollars into a public relations campaign to aggressively lionize Thomas, astroturfing support and admiration in op-eds, tweets, and websites. Today, conservative lawyers, law professors, and activists are in the midst of a full-court press to persuade the public that Thomas is a modest and misunderstood genius who deserves to be anointed as the savior of the Constitution.
It turns out that this massive publicity blitz was built on decades of work—expensive work—to canonize Thomas. Harlan Crow, ProPublica reported on Thursday, flew the justice to New Haven on his private jet so he could inspect his new portrait at Yale Law School, which Crow subsidized with a $105,000 gift. Cringier still in Thursday’s report is the fact that Thomas ally-slash-attorney-slash-biographer-slash-luxury vacation partner Mark Paoletta, along with his wife, wrote and performed a song for the justice while on a group vacation to the Grand Tetons, memorialized as a “special tribute.” (Sokol, the billionaire, funded the extravagant trip, and flew Thomas out on his private jet.) Photos from the Thomases’ various excursions with their benefactors consistently show the justice surrounded by rapturous, awe-struck admirers. “Have you met a Supreme Court justice?” Huizenga asked the waitress in the private golf lounge at the Floridian’s golf and yacht club before she took their order. “This is Clarence Thomas.” Again, Thomas was an “honorary member” of the club and paid no dues.
These benefactors invest in the justice strategically. Crow helped to fund the Clarence Thomas wing of Savannah’s Carnegie Library, where he was honored for his service to the country. The library is right around the corner from the Clarence Thomas Center for Historical Preservation, another Crow-backed project. Down the road lies the Pin Point Heritage Museum (underwritten by Crow); from there, it’s not too far to Thomas’ mother’s house—which Crow owns. He says he purchased it because he has plans to turn it into a museum honoring Thomas. There will undoubtedly be a ceremony, a private jet, and an invitation-only event to celebrate that, too.
Critics of the at times over-the-top hagiography surrounding Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the final decade of her career have suggested that progressives have no standing to criticize Thomas. (The justice himself has criticized judicial “myth-making.”) But the public adulation that sprung up around the “Notorious RBG” and turned her into the equivalent of an international rock star was not the product of a handful of sycophants pouring money into films, books, and fake twitter accounts. It was an organic, ground-up grassroots response by law students, independent filmmakers, and young feminists to Ginsburg’s published dissents. Her biography became a runaway bestseller because people were legitimately interested in her life and work. Nobody sat around a private golf club strategizing the rise of RBG as a progressive icon, and billionaires didn’t fund that rise in response to films they didn’t like.
Contrast that with the billionaire-funded charm offensive around Thomas. Last month, the Washington Post connected the dots between Leonard Leo, Paoletta’s various roles as the Thomases’ lawyer and publicist, pro-Thomas fan fiction accounts on social media, and the dark money behemoth Judicial Crisis Network. It turns out that a big dark money slush fund is hard at work telling the tale of Thomas’ singular greatness—all funded by the same billionaires who have worked to end the administrative state, to allow the same dark money to pollute elections, and to benefit the wealthy businesses they run. And yet, with all their millions, this group could only get 51 people to follow its sock puppet Clarence Thomas “fan account” on Facebook.
In the end, the most amazing takeaway from the new ProPublica reporting is not just how many wealthy benefactors insist they never discussed a single legal matter with the justice they were courting (scout’s honor), because evidently their numbers are legion. The most amazing takeaway is that these benefactors knew precisely which jurist to target, and how to do it. The same justices making claims about a sacred, untouchable, imperial court are being built up by their boosters to see themselves as untouchable emperors. Buy a man enough portraits, fish canneries, and biopics and he might just come to believe that he truly is not just a god among men, but also the tragic victim of vile haters who want him to follow the disclosure rules. What has been allowed to happen with some of the justices at the Supreme Court is far more corrupt than mere pay to play: It’s pay to create a myth of holy judicial infallibility, a lie that ultimately benefits both the payers and the paid.
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